RonAmok!

This past Friday, my friend Mike asked if I wanted to burn off some Thanksgiving calories on the basketball court. I jumped at the opportunity.

In between our games of one-on-one (Mike beat me two out of three games, BTW) we discussed my recent decision to expand the focus of RonAmok! beyond “social media for marketing and PR” to include new advances in hardware, software, and networking technologies that allow individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and governments to accomplish things that couldn’t have been conceived of just few short years ago. In between dribbles, we discussed the ramifications of crowd-sourcing, machine-to-machine communication, and the Internet of Things.

That’s when Mike, stopped, held the ball for a moment and asked, “But, what’s the link between social media and your new direction?”

“They are one in the same,” I answered, realizing that at first blush, the statement sounded crazy.

All communications require three things: a message, a recipient, and a method to connect the two. A medium carries messages to intended recipients. It doesn’t matter if that medium comes in the form of a traditional broadcast, the press, the Internet, a social networking site, drums or even smoke signals. The ramifications of easily digitized content delivered through cheap distribution networks has blurred the media lines. Therefore, rather than caring about how the message is delivered (the medium), communicators should care more about accomplishing a specific goal by matching medium with message.

The economies of scale resulting from our ability to cheaply digitize, distribute and present messages to the right audiences have opened exciting new possibilities. However, in order to take advantage of this scale, we must determine the optimum connection between medium, message, and purpose.

Communications decisions must be driven by purpose first, followed by message and medium. Ask not what Facebook, Twitter, or crowd-sourcing can do for you. Ask how they can help fulfill your company’s purpose.

I recently brushed the dust off an old, unpublished manuscript and was surprised to find its messages more applicable today than when I wrote them in 1998. For example, here’s a passage from an interview that I had with entrepreneur and philanthropist, Arthur Nelson:

The most successful business entrepreneurs solve problems through non-linear thinking, meaning that they don’t look for incremental solutions. Instead of squeezing twenty-percent more efficiency out of a process, they either radically alter the productivity of it, or eliminate the process entirely. Successful entrepreneurs don’t take baby steps to solve problems; they take quantum leaps, seeking solutions that are orders of magnitude more effective, by changing the rules and applying knowledge from seemingly unrelated sources. They ask themselves questions such as, “Why do we need this process at all?” If the process is required, they ask, “How can we make this process ten-times more efficient?” or  ”How can we equip our employees with tools and ideas that’ll make them one-hundred times more effective?”

After reading the passage, I couldn’t help but ask the following question: “Have businesses sought the 10X solutions offered by their new ability to digitize, distribute, and present content cheaply?”

Sadly, the answer is no, as companies continue to seek incremental solutions to their tired old problems. But why?

Seeking the 10X business solution is a risky proposition. It requires special skills that typically don’t manifest themselves within the ranks of those who are frequently tasked with adopting new technologies. Middle managers, for example, are trained to mitigate risk, as opposed to embracing it. They’re compensated to seek incremental solutions, such as squeezing an extra 20% out of a process that perhaps should have been reevaluated years ago.

If your company wants to find the 10X solutions to its problems, it needs to place these new communications technologies into the hands of its entrepreneurial thinkers. Then, after your non-linear thinkers have solved some of the company’s most important problems, the high-priests of process and best practices can be tasked with squeezing an extra 20% out of them.

Yesterday, my Twitter feed brimmed with news of SOPA, the so-called “Stop Online Piracy Act” that was being discussed in a House Judiciary Committee hearing. Scathing comments streamed by, concerned with freedom of speech, punishment without due process, and a fear that if passed into law, the bill would move the United States toward becoming a repressive regime.

Although it’s tempting to dogpile, instead of commenting on the commentary, I wanted to read the bill myself. So, I slogged my way through all 78 pages of H.R. 3261 to arrive at my own conclusions.

Although most of the bill’s criticism comes from a civil liberties perspective, I have a more fundamental problem with it–the bill’s details, or specifically the lack thereof. The bill describes a detailed process–from the moment a property rights holder makes a copyright claim all the way through how to stop the offense–yet it does nothing to clarify what an infraction is. Therefore, with a clearly defined punitive process and no clear definition of a violation, a deep-pockets plaintiff can wreak havoc on a shallow-pockets defendant. Considering the present economic climate, where advances in digital media technologies have allowed David to go toe-to-toe Goliath, this bill–as written–opens dark new competitive options for Goliath.

I’m a staunch supporter of the intellectual rights of content creators. I’m also a staunch supporter of innovation. If the goal of this bill is truly “To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the the theft of US Property…” then shouldn’t it be able to define what constitutes an actual theft? The bill references our present copyright laws as a start, but those still do nothing to clear up the murky issue of fair use.

Let’s take two very simple cases:

1) A website owner rips a copy of “Star Wars” from their DVD and puts it on their server for anyone to download.

2) One author quotes another author, with full attribution according the the Chicago Manual of Style.

Most people will agree that case #1 is a clear violation. By the same token, case #2 demonstrates a generally accepted writing practice.

But case #2 gets foggy when we step out of the text domain and into that of rich media, where no concept of an acceptable excerpt exists. For example, what constitutes fair use for a song? A few notes? A phrase? A hook? The entire chorus? Or what about a feature length film?

A 90 minute film shot at 24 fps consists of 129,600 frames. Is it acceptable to use one frame with full attribution, without asking for permission, or could the film’s copyright owner claim a violation through the Stop Online Piracy Act? For the sake of argument, let’s assume that a single frame is acceptable. If so, at what point do we cross the violation line?

Take this example. If one book author attributes 100 words of another book author’s 75,000 word work, 0.13% of that book is being used under fair use. If 0.13% is an acceptable for a text-based work, couldn’t an argument be made that 7.14 seconds of a feature length movie could be used in a similar way?

The problem is that H.R. 3261 contains a long list of punishments for a crime that the government has still yet to define.

Or can it?

The last few pages of the bill describes a responsibility to train property attachés, those agents who are tasked with defending U.S. intellectual property rights abroad.

“The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Commerce shall ensure that each intellectual property attaché appointed…is fully trained for the responsibilities of the position before assuming the duties at the United States embassy or diplomatic mission to which the attache is assigned.” (74:13-18)

“Such training and technical assistance programs shall be carried out in consultation with the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator.” (75:11-14)

So, if I’m reading this correctly, the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator is responsible to train these property right defenders. If so, shouldn’t training guidelines exist? What are they? Where are they? Is this training available to the public? If not, why not? Content creators would fill these classes in droves.

My problem with H.R. 3261 is that it can’t “…protect the creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation…” of new works without defining what parts of the old works are allowed to be used legally.

Until such a definition exists, the bill will hang like the sword of Damocles over those who seek to innovate through legally building upon the works of others.

Photo Credit (CC): bulletproofbra